On Wednesday, a federal appellate court ruled that public schools cannot block transgender students from using a restroom of their gender identity. “The 2-1 decision, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, cited to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s landmark opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, reasoning that such policies violated federal sex discrimination laws and the U.S. Constitution,” reports Law and Crime. PRRI data shows that over the past few years, Americans have been divided (45% favor, 47% oppose) over the issue of so-called “bathroom bills” – legislation that would require transgender people to use bathrooms consistent with their sex assigned at birth.

Next week you can join PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones during multiple events discussing his new book. On September 2, 2020 at 4:00 PM Jones will speak with the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. Jones will next appear on September 4, with an appearance with The National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Drawing on history, public opinion surveys, and personal experience, in “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” Jones delivers a provocative examination of the unholy relationship between American Christianity and white supremacy and issues an urgent call for white Christians to reckon with this legacy for the sake of themselves and the nation. You may purchase the book from Amazon here.

PRRI data from 2018 appears in a recent piece by Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic. In 2018, half (50%) of Americans believed American culture needed to be protected from foreign influence, while a similar number (48%) disagreed. White Americans were more likely than nonwhite Americans to worry about the country’s vulnerability to foreign influence. A majority (56%) of white Americans, less than half (45%) of Black Americans, and about one-third (37%) of Hispanic Americans held this view. At the 2020 Republican National Convention, this notion of preserving American culture has been on display. “For many voters, the president’s warnings about possible chaos if Biden wins may be less compelling than the daily evidence of the chaos that is already enveloping the nation with Trump in the Oval Office,” Brownstein writes.

PRRI’s most recent data shows that more than four in ten (42%) Americans think recent killings of unarmed Black men are isolated incidents, compared to a majority (56%) who say such killings are part of a broader pattern of how police treat Black Americans. According to The New York Times, the justice department is now involved with the investigation of a recent shooting in Wisconsin. “A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said late Wednesday that the agency had deployed more than 200 federal agents and marshals and would ‘continue to surge Kenosha with federal resources as needed and necessary,’” the Times reports.